


beg

by gingergenower



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 3x19 speculation, Angst, At the moment, Canon Compliant, Coda, M/M, but he does a good!, he's not entirely terrible!, he's still fairly terrible, lorenzo redeems himself!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: Just- please. Please help him.Lorenzo and Magnus talk.





	beg

Lorenzo opens the door from the couch with a curl of his fingers. “I’m rather tired of you and your boyfriend coming here to beg me for my help, Bane. You may leave.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” comes the sharp reply, “and I’m not here to beg you for anything.”

The words are vicious, meant to sting, but they hardly mean anything to Lorenzo. He’s quite used to the entitled lashing out when they don’t get what they want, brattish and petty, and he doesn’t let it touch him, he’s above it. Opening his mouth to answer before what’s been said makes sense of itself, he doesn’t actually speak.

Magnus Bane glares at Lorenzo, eyes dark and unforgiving, but Lorenzo is distracted.

Why would he give up on Lightwood? Does Bane have another lover? Why would Bane choose them when the nephilim would so willingly give him everything, give _up_ everything for him, even his own pride-?

“You left him,” Lorenzo says slowly, and Bane flinches.

Jaw clenched, Bane forces himself to meet Lorenzo’s eye again. “No. He broke up with me.”

And that makes even less sense.

Lorenzo remembers loving like that, but he couldn’t remember it until Alec Lightwood stood in front of him and reminded him of it. He remembers asking for mercy at the feet of forces more powerful than he could ever dream of being. He remembers the terror, the humiliation, of it.

He remembers promising himself to never love like that again, but falling out of love was never a choice he could make.

“I don’t understand.”

Lightwood _begged_. If Lorenzo had asked, he’d have got on his knees. There’s nothing Lorenzo couldn’t have asked of him without immediate, complete compliance. It was unsettling, and difficult to pretend otherwise. 

Bane narrows his eyes. “I’m not going to explain-”

“Nothing could have made him leave you. He begged me for your life-”

“You’re obviously wrong,” Bane spits, eyes flashing gold, bursting with anger and pain. “He doesn’t _want_ me.”

And that’s another shock. “How did you…? Your _magic_.”

“I didn’t,” Bane says, spine straightening, chin up. “My father did.”

Lorenzo stares at the wreckage of the former high warlock of Brooklyn, and for the smallest moment, he wonders if he should have helped save Jace Herondale. This terrified child accepted the help of the greater demon he banished centuries ago. He let Alec Lightwood and his devotion walk away, his magic hums with frustration and fear and it’s _scorched_ with pain.

_He is my world_ , Lightwood said. _And if he dies-_

He’s dead now, Lorenzo thinks. And where was Lightwood? Why was it a greater demon helped and _he_ -?

Lorenzo closes his eyes, feeling the regret of realisation deep in his bones. Of course. He’d laugh, but it isn’t funny. “Who summoned Asmodeus?”

“He escaped himself.”

“Who do you think _summoned_ him, Bane?” Lorenzo asks, slower.

Lightwood agreed to give up the only person he’s ever truly loved to make him whole again. He put himself at the mercy of a greater demon to save _Magnus Bane_ , and Magnus is fool enough not even to see it.

_Just- please. Please help him._

Bane falters. “I don’t know who- I couldn’t and no one else _would_ summon him-”

“Unless they were trying to return your magic to you.”

Bane must see the answer in Lorenzo’s eyes but can’t decipher it, because he looks away, thinking- and then his expression drops.

“Alexander,” he breathes.

He’s so pale, so horrified, he looks like he might collapse, and Lorenzo stands in case he does. He’s in shock.

“Bane-”

“I-” he stumbles back, into a chest of drawers, hardly seems to see them as he looks down at them “-I have to go.”

“Not like this-”

Tears spill down his cheeks, and Magnus looks to Lorenzo, the aching fear in his voice. “He loves me.”

It’s a question; Lorenzo nods. “Yes.”

Trying to steady himself with a rattling breath, he conjures a portal. Before Lorenzo can say anything else, Bane steps through it, and he’s left alone again.

After a few moments, swallowing his own emotion, Lorenzo wanders to his record player and flicks it on with his fingertip. He summons a drink and closes his eyes, the quiet filled with melodious notes.

His drink isn’t strong enough.

**Author's Note:**

> lucy and I yelled at each other for a bit about lorenzo on twitter and it inspired me


End file.
